324 Nights. Not One Was Mine Chapter 08
The day the divorce hearing began, Ethan was brought into the courtroom looking ten years older.
His hair was unkempt. Stubble had come in. The tailored suits, the gentleman polish—gone.
When he saw me, his expression was tangled.
Resentment. Hatred. A last flicker of unwilling pleading.
None of it worked on me anymore.
My attorney submitted the evidence, one item at a time.
Hotel check-in records. Surveillance footage. Voice memos. The pre-drafted divorce agreement and waiver. The audio recording from the scene. The medical report.
Each one landed on Ethan like a slap.
Every time he tried to talk his way out of something, the next piece of evidence sealed his mouth.
In the end, the judge ruled that Ethan had committed severe misconduct within the marriage, that the marital relationship was irretrievably broken, and granted the divorce.
Because of the prolonged extramarital affair, the concealment of marital assets, and the coordinated humiliation and abuse of the spouse in concert with family members, the property division came down decisively in my favor.
The marital home was awarded to me.
The joint accounts, the investment accounts, the appraised value of the vehicles—I walked away with close to seventy percent.
On top of that, Ethan, his mother, and his sister were jointly liable for my emotional distress damages, medical bills, lost wages, and reputational harm.
When the gavel dropped, Ethan lost it.
“On what grounds?!”
“My parents paid the down payment on that house!”
“Evelyn, you set me up!”
I looked at him, unmoved.
“Your parents paid the down payment? I paid the mortgage after we got married, right alongside you. I paid for the renovations. I paid for the furniture and appliances. Even every one of those gifts you bought Lindsay came off our joint account.”
“This is just returning what was mine.”
Ethan’s face went blue. He lunged toward me and a bailiff caught him.
I watched him thrash and I thought of the way he’d looked down at me before, when I’d knelt on the floor and said, “I didn’t do it.”
The wheel turns.
Turns out, it really does come back around.
A month later, the criminal side came down too.
Ethan was convicted on multiple counts—adultery (which in this state still qualified as significant marital fault and was factored into sentencing), defrauding a spouse of marital assets, conspiracy to defame, assault, and unlawful restraint—and given a corresponding sentence.
On the military side, while he wasn’t personally subject to the UCMJ, his affair with the spouse of an active-duty major was formally documented and became key material in the subsequent adjudication of Lindsay’s dependent status.
His investment bank triggered the morality clause in his employment contract and terminated him immediately. That world was smaller than it looked. Once the news moved, no one in the industry would touch him again.
Lindsay was fired by her firm under her own morals clause. The baby didn’t survive the stress.
Later, she went to see Ethan several times. Each visit ended in accusations flying between them.
He blamed her for costing him everything. She blamed him for ruining her life.
So much for true love. In the end, it was just wreckage on the ground.
Margaret and Chloe didn’t fare any better.
After Margaret posted bail, she couldn’t hold her head up anywhere in the community. A blood pressure spike sent her to the emergency room, and after that she shut herself in the house.
Chloe was fired when her company found out she’d secretly filmed and intended to distribute private footage. The fiancé she’d dated for years called off the engagement. His stated reason: he was “unwilling to be tied to a morally compromised family.”
The best irony was the Prescott relatives. The same eagerness with which they’d trampled me was the eagerness with which they now scrambled to disown Margaret and Chloe.
Word was, the Prescott family home eventually went up for sale to cover damages and legal fees.
By the day it was listed, even the realtor had heard the story.
One afternoon I was walking through the old neighborhood when I saw Margaret sitting alone on a bench, wiping her eyes.
Her hair had gone much whiter. She sat hunched, shrunken. When she saw me, her eyes reddened, and she actually stood up and came toward me.
“Evelyn…”
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